


The Spirit of Competition

by capncrystal



Category: Havemercy Series - Jaida Jones & Danielle Bennett
Genre: Dragons are troublemakers, Gen, Luvander is a prize plum, M/M, Post-Canon, Raphael is a poetic disaster, also other characters - Freeform, everything is fun and games until you get the feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-25
Updated: 2016-04-27
Packaged: 2018-05-28 23:40:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 17,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6350290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/capncrystal/pseuds/capncrystal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Life settles into a kind of routine when most of the surviving Airmen move into the countryside manor with the dragons, who decide that they rather enjoy making nuisances of themselves by being underfoot in the house. Balfour deals with middle child feels, Adamo finds his courage to ask out a subordinate, and Luvander ignores decorum. (Rating went up for chapter 6)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Ghost

**Author's Note:**

> Lots of sprawling meta and worldbuilding in the first few chapters, culminating in a very tense night dealt with in the last few. The rating will change during later chapters. This story is complete and will be updated weekly.  
> I... MAY have stolen a few of those tags from [Moonix](http://archiveofourown.org/users/moonix/pseuds/moonix) and [Luvanderwon](http://archiveofourown.org/users/luvanderwon/pseuds/luvanderwon).

Within a week of the trouble that had cost the city its Esar and the airmen their freedom of speech, Luvander joined Ghislain and Raphael in the three-hour carriage ride to the Greylace estate. The general purpose of the mission was to inspect their new home to see just what they’d gotten themselves into and to report back to Adamo on the general state of things.

Annoyingly, Ghislain was on a sailor’s sleeping schedule, which meant he was up before the sun. Raphael followed the same pattern, more or less, though he took naps during the day since the silly fool still thought he had the stamina of a much younger, healthier man and tended to wear himself out flitting around Thremedon to catch up on all that he’d missed. Luvander had a healthy respect for the late-sleeping habits of the wealthy Thremedon customer, which was why he was still sleeping when Raphael and Ghislain let themselves into his apartment via the store downstairs, even though he had pointedly not given either of them a key (yet). Ghislain dragged him from his toasty warm bed and held him still while Raphael selected horridly mismatching clothes from his closet. After waking him in one of the least pleasant ways he could imagine, they stuffed a thermos of tea into his hand and fairly carried him to the carriage. All told, it was horridly uncivilized, and he wouldn’t have had it any other way.

During the journey, Raphael, too cheerful by far for the obscenely early hour, peppered Luvander with saucy questions about his hat shop and the darling little accoutrements he sold to ladies. Luvander, in turn, entertained Raphael into a sound sleep with gossip about the polite society of Thremedon, then spent the rest of the trip listening to Ghislain recount the more exciting bits of his sailing adventures and promptly embellishing the hell out of them. It was, of course, pure coincidence that Luvander kept his normally expansive gestures uncharacteristically muted and that both of the conscious airmen spoke softer than was strictly necessary.

It was an unseasonably lovely day with clear, cold blue skies so blue they hurt to look at and the previous week’s snow weighing down the bare branches of the trees that stretched on either side of the road. Luvander sighed as Ghislain brought the carriage to a halt in front of a massive property; they’d reached their destination, which meant leaving his lovely warm seat and Raphael’s sleepy snuggly warmth on his shoulder. He gently shook Raphael awake and wiped saliva off his shoulder with exaggerated disdain before hopping down to his feet and stretching his spine with a few audible pops. Raphael hopped down behind him, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes and stumbling on his own feet, just enough to get a stern look from Ghislain but not enough to make the larger man step away from the horse who was snuffing the apple in his hand with a curious and delighted joy.

They spent the better part of the day exploring the grounds and the first level of the manor house with only a brief pause for a picnic lunch in the empty menagerie. Raphael made a lot of poetic noise about the architecture of the place, but since he was still very thin and pale and yawned between his words, they forgave him. There was, Luvander admitted privately, a certain haunted loveliness about how vines snaked their way up the walls and between the bars of the cages in the menagerie. He half expected to see ghosts around every corner. Then again, the ghost who was once again dozing on his arm had awakened a sharp and needy hunger in him, and he wanted to see certain ghosts more than he’d ever wanted anything.

Raphael woke himself up this time, with a half-smile and downcast eyes and self-conscious self-mockery that twisted Luvander up inside. He nudged Raphael and said something forgettable to lighten the mood, as he was so very good at. Raphael led the party towards the manor and its mysteries, and Luvander followed, masking how he pointedly ignored Ghislain’s raised eyebrow with cheerful determination and a familiar foolish promise that his feelings wouldn’t get away from him, this time. Without Yesfir around with her sharp claws and sharper tongue, Luvander could almost let himself believe it.

An undertone of melancholy threaded its way through Luvander’s thoughts as he sketched a mental map of empty halls. What had been his life for the last several months seemed like years ago; already the struggles of staying cheerful despite struggling business and pity under curiosity in the eyes of the ladies who came to see a real, live airman, the ladies who occasionally bought a hat just to giggle to their friends that they’d bought it from _him_ , had taken on a rose-tinted mist of fondness. Forcing himself to eat and live and _thrive_ despite fever and infection and sheer, soul-sucking grief seemed easy compared to what stretched in front of him now. If Raphael had returned, could others do the same? If new dragons were built, could old ones be resurrected?

Such thoughts were dangerous, not in the political sense- although that was true, as the events of the past few weeks could prove. They were dangerous to his emotional state. The carefully constructed shell of his cheer and bravado had cracked badly. It was fortunate, really, that Ghislain remained steady and self-assured. He had always been the immovable rock to which Luvander and the rest of them could cling to when tides of emotion, both manic and sad, would otherwise have swept them into foolish action. It had been so since Anastasia had come back without her first rider. It was doubly true now that there were riders with no dragons, and no war to burn off excess emotion.

It was Raphael’s smile, Luvander decided, that had knocked away the last of his defenses. They’d been fragile already, after the emotional highs and lows of the unexpected airmen reunion, but Luvander allowed himself to believe that he might have held out against his traitorous emotions if they’d all managed to keep a dour attitude. Lost in thought, half convinced he wasn’t breaking apart, Luvander turned a corner and saw Raphael, bathed in sunlight and crowned in dust motes, grinning like a lovesick fool as he lightly caressed a half-full bookshelf that had been left behind. It was only storage, they both knew; the house was little more than a storage unit for the lady Antoinette’s excess possessions, left covered in a layer of dust and neglected for years, but Raphael could have been looking at a chest of priceless gems in a dank cave. It was an expression, Luvander realized with a sick twist in his gut, that he wanted turned on him.

Faking was easy enough, for a while. He gave Raphael an exaggerated roll of his eyes and turned away to finish his exploration. If they moved in here quickly, and he stayed in Thremedon, they might spend enough time apart for Luvander to continue hiding his secret, ridiculous little schoolboy crush until he had ground his emotions under his heel and done away with them completely.

There weren’t enough hours in that day nor enough food in the carriage to permit them to stay late to explore the upper levels of Greylace Manor. Ghislain made a very manly offer to hunt them down some dinner, which Luvander brushed off as both ridiculous and highly unlikely since winter had dug her sharp nails into the land around them and Antoinette was likely to do the same to them if they were late with her carriage. With much bravado and a few hidden longing looks at the mysterious and beautiful house that would soon become their new base of operations, the Airmen headed back to the city and a tomorrow already promised to the duty of packing up Balfour’s apartment.


	2. Sentinal

In the weeks following Adamo’s arrest and subsequent adventure in th’Esar’s palace, he’d overseen the exodus of former airmen as well as his new wards into the remote Greylace manor. Adamo himself was one of the last to go, since in addition to the actual mountain of paperwork he was required to fill out (and wasn’t that a kick in the pants- He thought he’d been so clever, quitting the ‘Versity all of a sudden and leaving all the papers behind only for a servant of the palace to greet him with a demure smile and a “friendly” escort to an office filled with shiny new responsibilities), he had almost daily meetings with his new colleague and, since he was stuck in the city anyway, Adamo tried to fit in as many meetings with Royston as possible. He didn’t know how often they’d be able to see each other once he moved, and though recent events weighed on his mind pretty heavily and put a nice new strain on their conversation, he figured he’d miss his friend enough once they were apart, letters be damned, so he pushed himself to agree to every one of Roy’s invitations to dinner and the theater and even shopping, even though most of the time all he wanted to do was sleep.

While the estate had not been left in a perilous state of disrepair, certain changes were necessary to prepare it for life with- well. Not airmen, exactly, since the new dragons were too small to ride and he didn’t know yet whether their wings were even functional. To keep the new groups of dragons and their humans separate in his own mind, Adamo’d begun to call them by the name th’Esar had given them: The Dragon Guard. The foot soldiers (and, thankfully, there weren’t actually all that many of them) had gotten their memories altered. It suited Adamo just fine; Raphael and Ghislain knew enough about dragon handling to help him train up the three new recruits, and Balfour could act as a liaison between the Airmen and Guardsmen since he was both. Between his boys and the few magicians in the know who’d helped work on the dragons, they had a small crew of essential personnel. Antoinette and Adamo agreed it was too many people who were in on the secret, but there was no way to cut that number down without scrapping their entire compromise plan and disabling the dragons entirely. It was about the last thing they agreed on before getting stuck on the whole messy renovations-related headache.

Said headache started with the specific renovations ordered, and how despite all that talk about he and Antoinette going in as equals she and th’Esarina had stepped all over his advice and ordered a damned fence to be built around the estate. The house itself needed very little work, as it had all the necessary facilities to house three times the folks that would be living in it; outside of that, there were chickens, pigs, a couple of horses, and a big damned building that had been some type of stable for exotic pets that was fairly simple to repurpose into a hangar for the dragons. It had electric lighting, even. The changes to that building had followed his advice to the letter, which he was damned grateful for, but putting him, three former airmen, and a couple of green kids- his students, even- in a distant estate was bound to kick off enough rumors on its own. Building a great damned fence around the place practically screamed “We have a secret! We’re hiding something!” Antoinette had laughed it off and told him that his reputation as a crusty old war veteran would more than excuse any eccentric and paranoid behavior. The added reputations, or lack thereof, of the veterans who were moving with him could only help explain the whole ordeal. No amount of arguing would move her on the issue, so his reputation was forfeit.

To compound his headache, and guarantee it would last until further notice, Raphael had begun calling the place Dragon Manor. He stopped calling it that after Adamo sat him down and reminded him, perhaps a bit forcefully, that they were all trying to keep the damned dragons _secret_ , but he realized his mistake too late. Trying to kill the nickname only guaranteed it would stick around like glitter in the carpet. Raphael’s silence was louder than some folk’s words. No use in hoping the name wouldn’t get out, either, as even with a magical block in their brains keeping them from talking about the dragons to anyone that hadn’t been there that night, catchy nicknames had a way of getting out and Adamo didn’t doubt that Luvander’s big mouth would find its way around that magic block. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust his boys. He _trusted_ Raphael to find irritatingly obscure, poetic references and get annoyed when nobody understood what the hell he was talking about. He _trusted_ Ghislain would give everything from the chimney to the chicken coop ridiculous names and get the rest of the kids to go along with those names. He _trusted_ Luvander was slippery-smart enough to find ten different ways around the block within the first month and spread ever more ridiculous rumors around Thremedon for the next year, especially if new rumors about dragons boosted his sales.

 Well, assuming Antoinette was right and everyone in Thremedon assumed that the place was being renamed Dragon Manor purely because most of the surviving airmen were moving in, his reputation was well worth the sacrifice. It wasn’t like he’d be popping into town very often, after all, at least not for the year or more it would take to break down Troius and rebuild him into less of a shithead. By then, the rumors would have died down enough for him to walk around town without feeling like he was the main attraction at a circus.

Ghislain, Raphael, and Balfour had stayed at the estate through the renovation work, ostensibly for their health. Adamo packed up his place a mite slower because this new job had sent his life back on the same damned bureaucratic train it had been on back in his days as chief sergeant, only the paperwork he was bogged down with was twice as bad because the change in leadership meant all sorts of changes in rules that affected how everything was going to hash out. The mountains of paperwork and all the red tape tying up every last damned form was something he hadn’t missed, though he couldn’t bring himself to blame th’Esarina for her husband’s damn fool plan or the way it had backfired. At least he wasn’t teaching anymore. He found himself switching between Thremedon and the estate often enough that be bought a second toothbrush and shaving kit and, during the lunches that weren’t spent verbally dancing around important issues with Roy, entertained fantasies of fucking off to nowhere like Rook’d done.

Once he did get a chance to move in and get settled, he was actually relieved to see no trace of the sort of living space the Airman building had eventually become. It was only to be expected, after all; three airmen living in a spacious home wasn’t really anything like fourteen of them cooped up in a barracks building bleeding tension through paper mache and pranks. If the occasional bucket of tar was propped over the door of the chicken coop, he supposed he could overlook it, and send a little prayer to Regina in thanks that at least it was kept outside.

Ghislain had a rapidly growing list tacked to the door of Adamo’s downstairs office with a title in bold blue ink that read: **shit that needs to be fixed**. Various suggestions, growing cruder as the list went on, were penned in different handwritings. It provided plenty of work to keep his boys (and, he mentally corrected himself, his girl- and wasn’t _that_ a loaded fucking statement) busy for several weeks. It also encouraged him to draw up a rota for chores sooner rather than later, at least to fix the things that could be fixed.

There were a few problems, though, that weren’t anything like leaky faucets or doors that wouldn’t close right. Specifically, there were four mechanical problems, slightly larger than greyhounds, who realized three things on day one: first, that the newly repurposed hangar made from the bones of the menagerie was stone and drafty; second, that they could fit through the front door of the house; and third, that despite their delicate appearance the dragons _weighed a fucking ton_ and if they chose not to move willingly, no power on god’s green earth could budge them a single centimeter.

The wing of dragons he was getting to know now were similar in a lot of ways to the dragons he’d lived with before. Like their larger predecessors, they enjoyed praise and attention, demanded to be kept fussily clean, and tended to be sharper and fiercer than their chosen humans. Unlike their predecessors, they tended to get underfoot in awkward places. Adamo had never really thought of the dragons as large mechanical cats with wings before, but the comparison was apt, and was cemented in stone when Steelhands made a purring sound one day when Balfour was absently stroking her head with his gloved hands.

Initially, the dragons lounging inside was only a noticeable problem because Raphael and Ghislain had taken to playing cards with Troius, and they’d had to replace the cards three times (as well as put out the fires on the card table and carpet) when Ironjaw objected to him losing. Adamo let it go, for a while, because Laure had made a very sensible argument about keeping the dragons happy while they got to know their humans better. That very sensible argument went out the window when the weight of three dragons broke the back of the large couch in the common room, and for a while nobody was happy. It wasn’t the only thing to break, either: within the first month, the dragons actually managed to break two couches, a table, several dozen mugs and saucers (both matching and not), and the entire front door.

(“It could be worse, you know,” Balfour had murmured on the day of the second sofa’s destruction, drifting up beside him like a ghost with his hands in his pockets and an odd little smile on his face.

“I’m sure you’re right,” Adamo growled, wishing he had something to chew on so he would be less tempted to kick a hole in the wall. The thought sobered him a tiny bit; maybe he truly was becoming a grumpy old man. His reputation didn’t seem so large a sacrifice when confronted with the truth behind it. “Just can’t bring myself around to seein’ how, at the moment.”

“Well, for one thing, there’s only four of them.” Balfour gave him an unexpectedly wicked, thoroughly confidential smirk. “And for another, none of them are Havemercy.” With that, he walked into the chaos with the kind of confidence and poise that had gotten him endlessly mocked back at the airman, but which somehow worked so much better here. Half a year spent with spineless diplomats had done him more good than ill; he seemed to have found his backbone, or perhaps he was growing to fill the space left behind by all the boys who’d never given him the room to flourish. It suited him.)

Apparently he wasn’t the only one sending damage reports, either. Luvander showed up one day in a rented carriage, incriminating letters from Ghislain _and_ Raphael in his pocket and hauling a crate of tasteless mugs he had apparently collected from the Airman one day long ago and had been hoarding in his attic for Regina-only-knows what reason. Adamo had honestly hoped he’d seen the last of some of these specific mugs, the ones shaped like naked women that Compagnon had been so proud of finding. There were other crates, too, mostly stuff that had gone missing from the Airman building back when they first moved out, and Luvander had a wonderful time for a while handing out cheerfully tacky housewarming gifts like it was everyone’s birthday at once.

They spent a lively evening decorating the couchless common room with various baubles, also salvaged from the Airman and therefore tasteless and somehow cheerfully nostalgic. Adamo tried to put his foot down when they brought out the ceramic genetalia, citing the presence of a woman in the house, but he had to stop and reconsider when Laure, admittedly a bit drunk on the spiced cider that Ghislain had made batch after batch of in an attempt to recreate Magoughin’s beloved recipe, took playful offense to an offhand comment made by Raphael and challenged the older airman to a duel using said genetalia as jousting weapons. That was the first time he really bonded with Gaeth, both of them hiding in the kitchen while pretending they weren’t hiding, both of them ferociously pretending not to notice the horseplay in the other room that responsibility (for one of ‘em) and morals (for the other) wouldn’t let them notice without putting a stop to it.

All in all, it was a highly spirited visit that got them all in a festive mood for midwinter and did a lot to ease the tensions created by a bunch of strangers forced to live together. Luvander and Raphael took special care to teach Steelhands the lyrics to an impertinent drinking song about Balfour, including the rude verses they had invented during the weeks they’d waited for the dragons to be transferred to the estate. Adamo noticed Ghislain’s touch, here and there in certain verses, and despite himself the tune was stuck in his head for the rest of the night. All of them, including Adamo, had some of the frighteningly alcoholic (and not quite perfect, yet) cider Ghislain had concocted, and the evening ended with most of his boys, including the one who wasn’t, technically, a boy, passed out on the floor of the common room with the dragons curled between them like family dogs. He woke from a doze and made his way towards the stairs and his bed, the only light in the room coming from four pairs of slightly glowing mechanical eyes that followed his every movement in silence.

Midwinter came and went a little more than a week later, and once the dragons agreed to accept certain rules about breaking furniture and keeping downstairs, the humans grew resigned to the presence of dragons in often inconvenient spots.

Each dragon had her preferred behavior. Bluebell, for example, liked to lay across the tiled kitchen floor, bathing in the sunlight from the large bay window whenever there was sunlight to be had. Anyone who wanted to access the icebox had to step around her in a delicate mincing dance, as she somehow took up most of the space in there. Ironjaw, her repairs completed, disdained all humans except Troius, but she liked to curl at his feet- a behavior which kept Troius in smug, irritating smiles. Inglory was easily the most mischievous of the lot, bothering the chickens whenever she was bored and creeping into Laure’s bed at night. It was a violation Adamo couldn’t dress her down too sternly for without inviting lewd and unwelcome suggestions about why he cared so much about Laure’s bed, so he decided to let it go as long as she wasn’t obnoxious about it, as she certainly did a good job of keeping out unwelcome visitors. It solved a problem he hadn’t realized he’d been concerned about, and gave him time to sort out the tangled mess of emotions he had about her.

The best behaved of the lot was Steelhands, but she still managed to stir up the most trouble. She was inquisitive, learning the rules for the human’s games and occasionally allowing Raphael to read to her. She was also, despite every expectation a man could have about a mechanical creation of fire and death, extremely cuddly.

They’d begun to notice Steelhands’ penchant for pressing up against humans around the time they had a _third_ couch installed in the common room, one built with metal framework and fire-repellant cushions, designed more for sturdiness than comfort. She draped herself along the foot of the couch with her head resting on the cushions, looking for all the world like a winged metal greyhound. From this position, she kept score of the various games in the room and offered commentary on Raphael’s poetry that was occasionally polite enough for Balfour to repeat. Trouble was, she didn’t keep her affections to Balfour; if she had, it might have saved them all some grief later on.


	3. Tempest

The best thing about dragons, and really in some ways the worst thing about them, was that they could and did think for themselves. Anastasia certainly had, even when Amery had been her pilot and had snuck his baby brother in to meet her. Balfour remembered the sensation of his brother’s fingertips digging into his shoulders hard enough to leave bruises. He also remembered that first touch of Anastasia’s blue steel nose, warm even through his gloves. She’d huffed at him, and he had been terrified- who wouldn’t, when faced with a dragon? Amery promised that if he misbehaved, she’d eat him, and he would let her. Anastasia cheerfully agreed, but let Balfour step closer and walk the length of her.

He’d learned, later, that Adamo had been furious when he’d found out about the illicit visit. Even knowing the man now, Balfour doubted he’d been half as furious as their mother.

After the first scandalously short letter to his family explaining that he’d moved to a country estate, Balfour had letters piling up on his reading desk, read often but still unanswered. There were several from his mother, who had seemingly heard gossip from a few different sources and had roped extended family and even a few friends into writing him with their concerns. He wanted to write back. He’d even composed a few beginnings whenever he had time, hoping that a letter to his mother would clear his mind enough to compose one to Thom, but he found no satisfactory way to phrase his thoughts. The words he couldn’t say were still too large to work around.

In his own defense, the manor was busier than his little apartment could ever have been. In addition to construction of a large wall around the perimeter, Ghislain and Raphael insisted upon entertaining themselves by decorating the place to their own tastes and often dragged Balfour out of his room to help. Gaeth and Laure moved in shortly after the wall was completed, and their dragons raised ten kinds of hell within its boundaries, stretching their wings and terrifying white winter rabbits. Steelhands hadn’t been quite finished yet, and her skeletal looking wings made it impossible to properly fly, but she more than made up for it by being the fastest on land. Balfour had been promised that once Ironjaw was fully repaired, mechanics would come in to see about finishing her up properly.

Balfour watched the dragons exercise their newfound freedom each day from the wide porch that stretched around the house, sitting with Raphael and Ghislain and letting a hot cup of tea keep his hands from freezing in the wintry air. Laure and Gaeth liked to run after the dragons, who bounced through the empty backyard like puppies who’d discovered snow for the first time and couldn’t contain their excitement. He kept himself small at first, trying not to rub his connection with Steelhands into the faces of the two ex-airmen. He fully expected them to be awful to him, but they laughed and reminisced and treated him like one of them with only minimal teasing. If anything, they treated him more gently than they ever had before. It only made him feel worse, though; he felt as if there was a bubble of tension building up, and he kept waiting for it to pop and rain derision down on his head.

Perhaps there was something to be said about getting older and settling into their retirement- although, of course, it might not have had anything to do with their age, and have everything to do with the redheaded lass who constantly put them to shame with her fierceness. When they’d been settling in, Ghislain and Raphael had been friendly enough with Gaeth in a condescending sort of way- ignoring him or speaking over his head if they thought the topic was something he wouldn’t understand. It was behavior Balfour recognized from the old days, though seeing it turned against someone else who didn’t fight back made him deeply uncomfortable. Gaeth tolerated it with good humor, occasionally interjecting unexpected commentary that was either profoundly wise or an absurd non-sequitor. Either seemed about as likely, with Gaeth. Laure, however, tolerated no disrespect from the boys. Any slight, real or imagined, was taken seriously and avenged either directly (the first screaming match between Laure and Raphael had sent the dragons into a careening upset outside and had left Balfour on edge for hours afterwards) or revenged in a way that kept _all_ the boys on their toes. Gaeth was the only one entirely safe from her wrath, as he was the only one of them with both the wisdom and manners not to provoke her.

It was nearly five full weeks before Adamo moved in, and with Adamo came structure. Balfour’s workload didn’t increase, exactly; he’d done chores around the house and performed maintenance on his dragon, but he hadn’t realized how much it had felt like a vacation with only a few of them there. The structure was a change for the best, though, since the same carriage train that brought Adamo to their little country estate brought Troius in chains and Ironjaw in a covered wagon.

Prior to Troius’ arrival, the three dragons at the estate had been somewhat manageable. They stayed in what Balfour tried not to think of as a kennel- the menagerie, a beautiful stone building with creeping vines across the top and pens large enough for the older generation of girls inside. There were massive stone benches for the dragons to lounge on as well as a well-stocked maintenance supply closet, and everything was lit, as in the airmen, by strips of electric lighting above. To make it more homey, everyone in the house had added their own touches of decorations. Adamo had suggested they work together, as a sort of team-building exercise; Gaeth, Laure and Balfour had worked with their dragons to hang fairy lights and sparkly baubles for their girls, with Raphael and Ghislain offering amusing suggestions to fire up the dragons’ imaginations.

The fourth pen remained empty by collective agreement. It seemed sad and shadowed to Balfour, compared to the cheery nooks the dragons had made their home. When the sky darkened and the smell of dinner tempted them all back to the main house, Balfour stayed behind, fussing with the decorations until he was the last human in the building. He wasn’t alone; all three dragons were curled up in their respective pens, lazy in the way of all large predators but aware of everything around them. Feigning laziness, Balfour curled up an extra rope of fairy lights and left it in the corner of the empty pen before leaving.

It may not have made any difference. Ironjaw was led to her pen, but somehow Troius wasn’t given much time to decorate between the chores they all had, and nobody else would risk approaching her space. It didn’t seem to matter much, since the dragons had long since discovered that they could fit through the front door of the main house and had begun, and won, their campaign to make the lower levels of the manor their winter abode. They still took their maintenance in the menagerie, of course, and they guarded their pens with jealousy even if they didn’t live there most of the time- each pen seemed rather to be a home base. The girls were like the airmen before them, playing competitive games with each other for prize sunlit spots in the house.

Balfour couldn’t entirely say he minded. The house was pleasantly chaotic with four dragons running amok like large dogs, or perhaps like very large intelligent cats. The dynamics shifted in another way, too- nobody liked Troius much, so the scorn that had once been directed at Gaeth and Laure was funneled almost exclusively on him. Even Gaeth didn’t have much to say to Troius, and he returned the sentiment. On the other hand, Troius was the only one who didn’t treat Balfour as if he needed kid gloves. It didn’t move Balfour any closer to forgiving and forgetting the way Troius had changed their lives by getting them to commit treason, but there were days when Troius was easier to be around than anyone else.

Even Ironjaw settled down, and, Balfour thought, she served as a constant reminder to Troius about why he was there. In that sense, her presence was a good influence and a bad one; there were days when Balfour had trouble deciding which side of the scale she tipped more. On the one side, she kept him in line, giving him something to love and someone who was, in turn, entirely on his side in all things. On the other, Ironjaw stubbornly remained the only dragon who refused to see so much as a bloody nose as less than a total emergency, and her ferocious defense kept Troius irritatingly smug longer than anyone wanted. Fortunately, it was blood and blood alone that got her hackles up, and the ex-airmen were nothing if not creative in their punishments; after a few days, Troius subsided into a sullen silence and took to wearing long sleeves. Balfour felt as if he ought to feel sorry for him, since Troius had never had older brothers to subject him to such indignities and was obviously out of sorts about it, but the feeling never quite manifested.

Balfour’s head finally cleared enough to write a letter to his family, though the letter he owed to Thom still eluded him. There was too much he wanted to say that he couldn’t. Within a week he’d run through most of the supply of paper he’d brought with him, only to scrap each and every aborted beginning- this time burning them before the other airmen could snoop through his garbage and realize he wasn’t as right as he pretended. Instead of sitting and pulling out his hair in frustration, he attacked the list of chores and repairs with uneducated but enthusiastic gusto. With some help from Gaeth and Laure, who had also grown up in the country but in farms rather than a manor house, he was soon too occupied to dwell on any sort of correspondence. He kept himself busy that way for weeks until letters from the other members of the house got a response from the city and Luvander showed up with a carriage full of gifts, wrapped in a silvery blue fur-lined coat that Balfour guessed was meant to make him look like the snow maiden delivering her gifts early.

Said gifts were actually odds and ends from the Airmen, liberated, Balfour guessed, shortly after the statues were built and the survivors had gone their separate ways. They’d all taken a few mementos. He remembered Ghislain efficiently picking the locks on each of the airmen’s private quarters and methodically rummaging through them, though Balfour hadn’t managed the moral courage to look over his shoulder to supervise the looting. Instead, he’d taken a few things from the common room and kitchen, most of which had shifted in turn to the manor- including Ivory’s old piano bench, which had once graced the common room of his own tiny apartment and in the migration to Dragon Manor had somehow ended up in Raphael’s bedroom. Balfour didn’t bother objecting, since objections would only fall on deaf ears and it was undoubtedly safer up there.

During the looting of the Airmen, Balfour hadn’t noticed either Adamo or Luvander taking anything, but he supposed whatever was left over had to be boxed up by _someone_. Sure enough, the trashier relics had been lovingly wrapped in paper and boxed up, placed in storage where the only ones they could horrify were the spiders brave enough to intrude on their retirement.

He had to admit, the manor felt more like home with the addition of the several years’ worth of airmen collectibles. The worst of it, which was to say the obviously pornographic pieces, went immediately upstairs to be perused at length by Ghislain and (Balfour hoped) kept out of sight of decent folk. The remaining ornaments were hung on display, put in the cupboards to use, or used as weapons. None of them would soon forget Raphael’s wide eyed expression of terror when, having said one too many careless words, he was confronted with the tip of a lovingly painted ceramic phallus centimeters from the tip of his nose, wielded by Laure like a saber held by a duelist. He’d stayed perfectly still for a moment, fighting back shocked laughter until Luvander cracked a joke about Raphael taking up his “sword” and giving her a challenge. Both the offending weapons were broken in the excitement; Laure’s smugness afterwards made it clear that she’d had that goal in mind all along. Balfour was privately impressed with how deftly she’d handled the situation.

When Luvander left a few days later, he took the light with him; the skies darkened hours after his arrival, and clouds piled high in the sky, like an echo of the massive cobalt mountains in midair. Those were the kind of clouds that even the dragons couldn’t fly through, since the winds would batter them as badly as ke-han magic and for a hell of a lot longer, to boot. Ghislain, the only one unmoved by the breathtaking sight, ordered them to pull as much firewood as they could into the house and settle in for a long wait. For the next two weeks, the massive winter storms rocked the upper floors of the house with howling winds that put even the late-summer monsoons to shame. The wind seeped through the cracks somehow, wailing like ghosts, depressing in the daytime and eerie at night.

Midwinter, though a relatively minor holiday in Volstov, had always been boisterously celebrated by the Dragon Corps. Balfour assumed this tradition had its roots somewhere in the early days of the corps, when any excuse to party was seized and capitalized on. Ghislain made punch, Raphael and Troius made a temporary truce and recited stories together, and Laure and Gaeth got into the spirit by making up stories of their own, but despite their best efforts midwinter was a dull and halfhearted celebration. Balfour wondered privately if it was more than access to Thremedon they were denied- it was access to their friends in the city that most of them were missing. Laure fretted to Gaeth about Toverre, and Adamo said nothing but when Balfour caught him staring out the windows at the snow he knew he must be missing his friend the margrave. As for Raphael and Ghislain- Luvander’s name wasn’t spoken, but his absence was keenly felt.

A few days after midwinter, when the storms still hadn’t abated, Adamo added to the tension by rationing the food in the pantry. Everyone got snappish and cranky, prowling from one end of the house to the other; never had their exile felt so much like a prison. There was, however, a redeeming factor that brought everyone in the house together: The dragons, warm in the winter nights, needed care and attention. The maintenance supplies were kept in the other building, close enough to be frustrating but far enough that Ghislain forbade anyone from attempting to venture out to retrieve them in the blizzard. He painted a picture in words of blue, frozen corpses being found in the spring, and he did it with a grim smile on his face that sent more shivers down their spines than his words.

The challenge rallied them together, and maintenance supplies were jerry-rigged from whatever they could find in the house. Balfour couldn’t have imagined a better bonding experience, but he refused to suspect Ghislain of summoning the storm on purpose, since that way lay madness. With the cooperation, moods began to lift, and Raphael became the unexpected hero of the hour by introducing the dragon guard to the idea of singing to their dragons (and having the dragons sing back).

As the guardsmen learned each other’s quirks and habits, they began to form a bond like the one that had once existed between the airmen. One snowy morning, Balfour found himself herded into a private nook where the dragon guard held a meeting- just the four of them. He was surprised and pleased to find them getting along so well- Laure and Gaeth got along like houses on fire in Molly, of course, but Troius was still generally disliked even if he had proved himself useful in many surprising ways, such as keeping the dragons still for their cleaning when nobody else, even Adamo, could keep them from fidgeting around to see the process. Even disliked, Balfour’s private opinion was that Troius had a stronger claim to the group than he did. Balfour was a part of both the airmen and the dragon guard, but standing between them meant he didn’t truly fit into either social circle.

 The meeting was, of course, about the dragons. They agreed it was best not to let on just how much the dragons were learning, lest it lead to the airmen giving them bad ideas like trying to prove their mettle by flying through a thunderstorm or running off to burn down a ke-han fortress. The idea was to discourage Raphael from telling the dragons stories about the war, which had the extra bonus effect of keeping his ego to a manageably deflated state. The effort lasted for a while, but in such closed quarters no secret could last for long. To Balfour’s chagrin the “Balfour Steelhands” tune was especially popular with the dragons, who passed it back and forth in mental harmony until it was impossibly lodged in everyone’s heads. Even Gaeth was caught humming it over breakfast.

Finally, the storm broke just in time for the new year. The skies cleared and the whole world settled into a sparkling white winter stillness. The road to Thremedon, lost to them for so long, was once again visible.


	4. Momentum

When Adamo left the manor for the first time since his unofficial exile the worst of the winter had passed and spring was barely beginning to touch Volstov, with snow melting and refreezing into dangerous puddles of black ice on the country road but flowers tentatively blooming through the frost in the fields. He left his carriage at a stable at the northwestern gate of the city, since it seemed only fair to let the horse have a rest after carrying him all the way from the manor. Besides, he wanted to see Thremedon in a way he couldn’t from the front seat of a cab. He’d missed the city enough to start having fond memories of it, and he figured if he walked through the entire thing again like he’d done when he was a professor, he’d get to hating it again and then he could sleep at night.

Adamo trudged through the slushy streets of Thremedon with his hat pulled low and a scarf wound around his face. He’d been gone for months now, and he’d never considered himself important enough to remember anyway, but he still refused to make eye contact with any of the strangers that crowded past his elbows in the city. It itched under his skin not to head straight over to Roy’s place, but it was too early in the morning for Royston to be up anyway, so Adamo squared his shoulders and made his steady way to the marketplace streets and their favored, sparkling child, the Rue d’St. Difference.

Because he was focusing so hard on being anonymous and getting to his destination before his feet fell off, he noticed the shadow of the first pair of statues before he saw them looming up ahead of him. He slowed his walk and pushed up the wide brimmed hat up enough to get a good look, pretty sure he looked like a country bumpkin doing it and pretty sure he didn’t care either way. He’d hated this part of town a little, when he had to walk it every day, but he’d missed it too and it only seemed right to pay his respects to the boys. He wouldn’t be laying flowers at their feet or anything, since if he did that he was pretty sure their ghosts would haunt him for a week just to laugh at his sorry ass, but a moment standing in silence wouldn’t bug ‘em too much. Besides, he had to make sure nobody’d graffiti’d the statues (at least, not with anything the boys wouldn’t write on each other) so that he wouldn’t have to go bitch to the provost about it.

When he pushed open the door to the Yesfir hat shop a bit later, he caught Luvander sewing lace across the brim of a miniature pillbox hat with his tea steaming away by his side. In his obvious delight, Luvander’s elbow knocked over his tea, spilling it across the table and sending a fluffy white cat bounding from beneath the table. She settled under a chair, licking her paw and glaring daggers at them both.

 “Oh! It’s you! It’s a real, live Airman, in my shop!”  Luvander grabbed a blank felt hat from a pile behind him and fanned himself with it. “And me with my hair all a mess- My stars, this _is_ something to write home about!”

“Cute,” Adamo said, leaning down for a better look at the cat. “Didn’t know you could make friends. Congratulations.”

“Isn’t she just darling?” Luvander asked, rummaging for a towel to clean his work surface. “Evie’s been my new shopgirl ever since I had to let Emma go. Terrible business, really, and none of yours, but at least Evie doesn’t dip her hand in the till.” Luvander clucked as he wiped the table down. He kept rambling for a bit as Adamo sat down and stayed still, attention more focused on the cat than Luvander. “Though she does occasionally dip her paw in the cream. And on my croissants, really, she’s worse than Ghislain for stealing food right off your plate if you leave it alone for even a second. But you didn’t come here to hear me ramble on and on about my new friend.”

“You don’t know that,” Adamo looked at Luvander very seriously. “It’s a major accomplishment, you making friends. I’m very proud of you and I want you to know that.” Luvander made a touched face and put his hand over his heart.

“Aw, Chief. You sentimental old bastard,” Luvander said fondly, ducking into the back room to heat water for tea.

Adamo cleared his throat and shifted. “Yeah, yeah. I missed you, too.”

“Oh, I hope you haven’t gotten the wrong idea,” Luvander’s voice floated out amidst the clinking ceramic sounds of an impromptu meal being prepared. “I know you made the trip all the way out here just to visit me and for no other reason whatsoever, and I’m positively thrilled about that, but I have to break some very bad new to you. You see, you aren’t my type. At all. I’m so sorry, but I’ll break your heart eventually, may as well save yourself the pain.”

“Shame,” Adamo drawled, taking a seat at the table and crossing an ankle over his knee. “And after I bought the ring, and all.” The chair was comfortable and familiar, as it should be- it had once occupied his office downtown. The only confrontation they’d had about it had been a raised eyebrow from him, and a shrug and not-very-apologetic smile from Luvander. He didn’t mind all that much, to be honest. It wouldn’t have fit in his apartment, back then, and he didn’t fancy putting the thing in storage, so he’d left it at the Airman for the boys to make off with. He didn’t tell Luvander that he’d have visited even without the chair.  

“Don’t sass me in front of Evie,” Luvander chided, setting the table with a teapot that looked as if it had once been a dark ceramic teal, but had shattered and been fused back together with gold. He set a small, matching plate full of tiny cucumber sandwiches next to it and fussed back to the kitchen for matching mugs. “You’ll teach her bad manners.”

“Someone’s gotta,” Adamo grinned. “It’s tradition, isn’t it?” He lifted the corner of the plate, admiring the set while Luvander wasn’t looking. It had a certain piratical touch to it that he couldn’t help but approve of. He took a sandwich and leaned back just in time for Luvander to come back into the main shop.

“Excuse me, I’m a respectable man of business now and my cat should be very well behaved.” The blond sat down and the cat jumped into his lap, her fluffy tail rising straight up to bat him in the face. “Actually,” Luvander leaned forward with a conspiratorial smile, “Evie is a nickname. It just feels awfully strange to be angry at Evariste for having a litter of kittens in my closet.” Adamo met the cat’s hazel eyes, nonplussed. She stared right back at him, holding his attention until Luvander delicately cleared his throat.

“Sorry,” Adamo tilted his head, smiling slightly. “It’s just.. I can see the resemblance.”

Luvander huffed. “At any rate, she’s much worse than her namesake at chess. All she does is knock over the pieces and carry off the bishop to places unknown.” He leaned back, gesturing carelessly as he spoke, glancing at the bottom of Adamo’s chair- which had just enough space for a bishop to roll underneath- with sudden narrow-eyed suspicion.

Adamo swallowed his bite of sandwich, swallowing his laughter with it. “Hold on. Are you saying,” he asked gravely, “That there are kittens in your bedroom?”

Luvander glanced up, eyebrows raised for an open and innocent expression. The twinkle in his eye somewhat destroyed the illusion, but since Adamo knew him, it wasn’t like he was about to fall for it anyway. “Why? Would you like to take a few home? I don’t know how good they’ll be at mousing, but I can just see Balfour with a precious little white-haired kitten. And a matching white hat, of course. I don’t really _do_ men’s hats, but he does have such a delicate physique, he might be able to pull it off. I’ll even throw in the kitten for free, as he _is_ a dear friend.”

“We’ll see. It’s not like we need any more pets out there.” Adamo cleared his throat and shifted, then shifted again. On a lesser man, it might have looked fidgety.

Luvander picked up a sandwich and nibbled, his eyes on Adamo with the full force of his undivided attention, damn the man. He’d never paid half so much attention back when Adamo’d wanted him to.

“Sell a lot of hats lately?” Adamo asked, glancing around in feigned interest.

“Not enough to pay myself for sitting idly by while you avoid the subject,” Luvander smiled like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. “I’m not talking. From what I’ve heard about the size, speed, and talent of my mouth, you should take advantage of the situation while you have the opportunity.”

“Lot of words for someone who ain’t talkin,” Adamo grumbled, ignoring the bit about talented mouths. There but for the grace of god, and all. “Alright, alright, don’t look at me like that. I’m takin’ Laure to dinner this Saturday. The kids’ve got the dragons under control and I can trust Ghislain to keep an eye on Troius.” He looked away, using a broad thumb to smooth his eyebrow before massaging his temple. He hadn’t had that particular nervous tic since his ‘Versity days- the student ones, not the teaching ones. Trial by literal fire had burned all that shit out of him a long time ago, and here he was, fidgeting like a schoolboy in front of the loudest of the loudmouths he’d trained up.

Luvander’s eyebrows seemed intent on crawling their way up his forehead to meet the rest of his hair. “Dinner is a big step for you, I assume.”

“I mean, we have dinner together every day, but it’s not the same thing. This is a romantic dinner.” He still felt fidgety, and now desperately unhappy. He’d rather be talking about this kind of shit with Roy, but since he couldn’t describe the exact situation to him- that was, dating a subordinate without making his other subordinates feel slighted- without raising some mighty uncomfortable questions about why exactly he had subordinates in the first place, he settled for the closest approximation.

“Are you actually asking for my advice?” Luvander asked, tilting his head with an odd smile on his face.

“Nah,” Adamo waved his hand. “Nothing like that. Honestly, I think I’m just hiding out in town for one more day. You know, enjoying the status quo before it changes.” Looking down at his teacup, Adamo spoke softly. “It’ll be a good change, for me and her, but I don’t know if it will necessarily be a good change between me and the boys.”

Luvander played with his teacup, looking like he hadn’t a care in the world. When he finally spoke, it was in an offhand tone. “Well, if it would make you feel better, I could ask Balfour on a date.” 

Now there was a mess Adamo wasn’t particularly keen about stepping into. He leaned back, taking half a second to find the best way around that statement that wouldn’t drag him kicking and screaming into the land of unwanted details about Luvander’s fucking love life. It didn’t help that neither of them, Luvander included, knew where Luvander’s line was between jokes and reality. “…Were you plannin’ on doing that?”

 “Not particularly,” Luvander smiled sunnily, chin resting on his hand. He seemed to enjoy this a little too much, the devious little shit. “But if it would make you more comfortable, you know, breaking the rules about… fraternization,” Luvander drew out the syllables, savoring them. “Then it’s a sacrifice I will happily make.”

Sacrifice, his ass. The only time Luvander wanted anyone comfortable was when he didn’t want ‘em noticing him painting a target on their backs. “Kid,” he pronounced lighthearted judgment, “You are bell-cracked.”

“Aren’t I just?” Luvander smiled like a cat, smug and just a smidge inscrutable. “Now, on that note, there is something a bit more serious I’d like to discuss with you.”

“Hang on, now,” Adamo frowned, backing once again from the nasty little nest of details he knew Luvander wanted to spring on him. “This is serious.”

“Please,” Luvander smirked. “You think you’ll change in our eyes? Owen Adamo, you have always been a father figure to us whether you like it or not, and the only thing that will change is that you’ll romance the lady, end up marrying her, probably have a brood of your own within a few years and absolutely cement yourself as the father figure to the dragon corps by becoming an actual father.” He leaned back, steepling his fingers under his chin and enjoying what must have been a horrified expression on Adamo’s face. “I for one welcome the little sibling we’ll eventually get. I do hope we get a baby sister. I can dress her up in the most adorable hats.” His tone went wistful at the end.

Adamo’s mouth opened and closed for a moment, without sound. “I want you to backtrack a few years there,” he finally managed, “and get back to asking her to dinner.”

“Oh, fine, but this conversation is far from over.” Luvander stood, dusted himself off and stepped into the kitchenette to start a new pot of tea. “You’ll find that Les Champs is terribly overrated this season. They’ve gotten themselves a new chef that has _ideas_ about the menu. There is a new place over near Tete-a-tete that the Esarina herself favors, though I’ve really no idea why you’re asking me about all this and not your friend the Margrave Royston. He’s actually been to these places, and, poor me, all I’ve got to go on is the gossip from my gentle customers.” He gave Adamo a meaningful look from across the room; had Luvander been wearing glasses, Adamo thought he would have looked over them at him.

“Roy’ll give me better advice about where to go,” Adamo admitted. “But I can’t tell him about Inglory. Or how I’m technically about to ask my subordinate to dinner. Or, for that matter, how it might seem as if I’m playin’ favorites by takin’ her out…”

“…And not the others?” Luvander asked playfully, getting a glare in return. “Adamo. _Sir_. You’re being ridiculous. She’s a girl. The rules are different for her whether you take her out to dinner or not. Besides, how long has it been since she told you to take her out? Don’t tell me it just happened. She’s been mad for you since she met you. It’s terribly obvious.”

“Is that why Raphael starts loudly reading poetry in another room every time her and I have dinner together? Because that does clear up his comment on improving the romantic atmosphere.” He had to assume that the choked noise Luvander made was an aborted laugh, which was well and good since it was what he’d been going for anyway.

“He doesn’t,” Luvander giggled. “Wait, what am I saying? Of course he does. The absolute tit. Tell me,” He moved back with their second pot and carefully refilled their cups, “Does he spill his heart out to you?”

“No, and I’m glad,” Adamo retorted. “There are things I don’t need to know.” It took a moment for him to realize that Luvander was staring into his tea with a tired little smile. “He’s tried, a few times,” Adamo offered, not sure why he felt such a twist in his gut. It couldn’t be… could it?

Luvander glanced up, a smile in his eyes. “What do you do?” He asked politely.

“I wait five minutes for something to distract him.”

Another choked back laugh was his reward. “That would do it,” Luvander admitted, holding the teacup up to his lips.

The conversation faded for a moment, but before things turned awkward the doorbell chimed and a well-dressed lady entered the shop. Adamo entertained himself for a moment by watching Luvander hop to her needs. It was almost comedic, since Luvander was a scarecrow of a man with expansive gestures and compliments laid on a little too thick to be believable; he might have had a decent career on the stage. Another customer came in before the first left, and the apologetic little smile Luvander threw him was a clear enough message: _get the fuck out, sir, before I start finding creative ways to make you leave_.

It should have been a relief. One of Adamo’s major goals in any visit to Luvander was to avoid any information that would make him look sideways at his boys. They were grown men, after all, and clever enough to look after their own affairs without him looking over their shoulder, so there really was no need to make a fuss over what barely amounted to a hint anyway.

 He made an effort, out of politeness, to tidy up their little lunch setting. Luvander’d done the work to set it up, even though he hadn’t been expecting guests, so it would be rude to leave him with all the dishes too. Afterwards he put on his on hat, grinning to himself about how shabby it looked compared to its feathered and beribboned cousins, and took his leave. The long, twisting walk to Miranda and its oddly designed buildings gave him time to push his thoughts back to his own problems, and by the time he pulled Royston’s doorbell, he’d put the odd turn of conversation entirely out of his head.

As Adamo stood in his friend’s plush living room waiting for Royston to finish dressing (which would, inevitably, take another half an hour at least if Adamo allowed him), he amused himself by thinking about how adorably naïve it was of Luvander to imagine he’d have final say in the outfits of Adamo’s children without competing tooth and nail with Royston for the privilege. Hell, he grinned to himself, country or city, the kid would be the best-dressed brat in Volstov.

A reflection of his own grinning face caught his eye in a mirror above Royston’s door and it sunk in that, when it came to this whole romancing business, he was well and truly fucked.


	5. Forsaken

Balfour had hoped that his quiet anxiety would melt away with winter. Everyone at the manor had settled into some kind of stride, including him, and from an outside perspective it was like one of those idyllic country paintings his parents had so loved. He had no responsibilities except the routine daily chores of keeping the manor going and of caring for Steelhands, which was less a chore and more a labor of love. Thremedon only a short trip away- close enough to access when he wanted, far enough away that the city life wouldn’t intrude on his increasingly private life. Boredom was kept at bay by training exercises with the dragons and upkeep of the gardens they were planting. Life should have been perfect.

Nothing, of course, was ever that easy.

The snow had barely melted when Ghislain returned to Thremedon to care for the ship he’d left in harbor. He took her, and her new captain-in-training, on a last farewell journey around to the Kirils, promising to return before the late summer monsoons began to hit Volstov like an angry fist. He also promised exotic prizes, depending upon how well his new captain- a dark haired, dark skinned woman with a sharp tongue and a hot temper- took to the actual life of piracy.

Despite the promise of a short journey, Ghislain’s departure ripped open old wounds. Balfour found himself immune to the charms of springtime. He kept his smile on, of course, but fewer and fewer things made it genuine. Raphael, too, seemed affected, sulking around the house like a lazy housecat and staring longingly out the windows like he hoped to see the distant figure of a visitor on the road. Balfour wasn’t sure if he truly was just bored or if he just hid his sadness better, but at the slightest provocation, Raphael would become cheerfully aggressive, quoting disgustingly romantic poetry at Laure and Adamo who were finally beginning their long-anticipated romantic courtship.

A heatwave struck Volstov in mid-spring, bringing oppressive humidity and temperatures that rivaled midsummer. The windows had been thrown wide to let in errant breezes and the heavy scent of magnolia that crawled up the side of the manor. The house was mostly empty; Adamo had taken Laure and Gaeth to the city to meet Toverre, Hal, and the Margrave Royston for supper and a play.

The idea of a triple date had sent Raphael into fits of glee, and he’d spent most of the evening suggesting such lewd ideas for the evening that even Adamo had blushed and Balfour had to retire to his rooms to escape the vile atmosphere. Without Ghislain’s wicked wit to temper his depravity, Raphael’s suggestions were rambling and poetic; half his references were to things none of them understood, or would admit to understanding. When Luvander arrived in midafternoon, they thought they were saved, as the two tended to distract each other. Raphael’s perverted suggestions, however, were met with delight and amplified by Luvander, who couldn’t resist an opportunity to tease lovers. Balfour, disgruntled and out of sorts, had the ungracious thought that Luvander’s keen ferocity against romance was only because of his own poor luck in the area.

Any of the airmen together were a force to be reckoned with, but the two of them chose to use their powers for evil and drove the saner members of the household to flee as fast as possible. This left Balfour on Troius-watching duty with only the company of the terrible twosome who were no proper company at all. Fortunately Troius, perpetually offended that he needed to be babysat like a child, declined the pleasure of their company and stayed in his room to read. This left Balfour in the common room to do the same while simultaneously ignoring the verbal barbs Luvander and Raphael exchanged over a game of checkers.

The early part of the night went deceptively well, lulling Balfour into a sleepy peace as the temperatures became bearable. When he realized he’d read the same page three times and still had no idea what it said, he realized that he was dangerously close to falling asleep on the couch. Doing so wasn’t normally dangerous, per se, but when he considered leaving himself vulnerable in his present company, a little thrill of horror crawled up his spine. He let his spine stiffen with intent and surged to his feet. A quick detour upstairs to check on Troius was made, but things between them had become so cool that even a friendly offer of tea was declined. Alone, feeling only slightly rejected, Balfour descended into the kitchen alone.

When he returned with the cup warming his hands and steam curling around his face, the two ex-airmen had abandoned their board game and had descended into the couches. Raphael had his nose in a book, because of course he did. Luvander’s full, fascinated attention, which was so elusive and dangerous to humans, was fully occupied by the delicate mechanical wonder that attached Steelhands’ newly-finished wings. This close scrutiny was only possible because Steelhands had crawled up on the couch to grant him better access and lay with her head in his lap.

While the dragons had broken a few couches in the beginning, they had eventually accepted that the couches were for the comfort of the humans. Most of the breakage had, in fact, come from tail swipes or from the weight of the dragons as they went over the couches in a chase or, occasionally, _through_ the couches as if they weren’t there at all. Steelhands liked to lay her head on the seat next to Balfour, but she most decidedly knew better than to climb up onto it- especially with _Luvander_.

Balfour didn’t realize he was staring until the teacup in his hand shattered.

Raphael jumped, then scowled at him, carefully holding his book out of the way as Balfour kneeled to clean up the shards of dripping painted clay. He let his hair fall into his face to hide how red he’d become; it had been ages, now, since he’d broken a cup and he’d rather liked this one. Old feelings of shame washed over him as the boys watched him clean up without offering to help, and he hurried to gather all the broken pieces and flee into the kitchen to dispose of them.

He took his time in the kitchen, wringing the stains out of his gloves and carefully sopping up moisture from the spaces between the overlapping plates that made up the outer chassis of his hands. They hadn’t laughed outright at him, he thought, but he remained unsure if that was progress in their respect for him or if he’d fallen so low in their esteem that he was no longer worth laughing at.

The quiet was unusual, he decided, but only because Luvander usually enjoyed hearing himself talk so much that he filled entire rooms with his chatter. His tension tonight was for internal reasons relating to his own neuroses, rather than any true rejection. A few deep breaths and a moment of stillness brought him back to rational thought and he squared his shoulders to return to the common room as if he hadn’t just derped like it was his fucking job.

Only one step inside the common room, Balfour stopped to reassess the situation and froze. Luvander was still happily engrossed in his inspection of Steelhands’ intricate mechanics. Raphael, on the other hand, had set his book aside and was glaring at Luvander with an arched eyebrow. The tableau had the feel of a storm brewing, and if he was very, very quiet, he might escape unnoticed before it broke.

“You know,” Raphael began, crossing his arms with a very unhappy note in his voice, “It’s not very polite of you to have another man’s girl in your lap. Balfour must be horridly jealous.” Balfour, caught in the doorway, sighed heavily and turned to face them with a smile he couldn’t be bothered to fake convincingly. He didn’t need to, since neither of them were actually paying attention to him. Balfour was nothing more than a prop, but if he left now and ruined their game, the full force of their malicious attention would fall on him for the rest of the week.

Luvander looked at Balfour with an exaggerated look of concern. “Oh, dear. It hadn’t really occurred to me that Balfour might be jealous.” Balfour opened his mouth to protest, but even this initial attempt was halfhearted; Raphael beat him to the punch, and had Balfour spoken, he would have been drowned out by the dark haired man’s much louder voice.

“Really, Luvander, you’re in the city most of the time, simply drowning in eligible, single women. You ought to pay more attention to them and leave Balfour the only girl he has any chance with.”

“Hey, now,” the protestation left Balfour’s mouth before he could stop himself. He crossed his arms when Raphael spoke over him, knowing it didn’t matter much. He knew what was going on, of course, but the offended look he gave them had about as much effect as a butterfly against a dragon.

“Really,” Raphael’s voice was loud enough to drown out Balfour’s faint protest. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself, cuddling his girl so brazenly right in front of him.” 

“I’m sorry, Balfour,” Luvander apologized, giving Raphael a mockingly apologetic look. “I simply can’t help my charm. The ladies can’t stay off of me.” His clever fingers had found the spot where Steelhands liked being stroked, just at the nape of her neck- the magicians had explained it as an interruption of the electric impulses that ran through their skin, something similar to what happened in a human nervous system. That was what Balfour had understood of it, anyway. There was something about bare skin that the dragons claimed was very pleasant. It was something he couldn’t quite pull off without rubbing his elbow or face on her, which even in his loneliness he hadn’t yet resorted to.

Luvander had very clever fingers, Balfour noticed, feeling slightly flushed and more than slightly inadequate in comparison. It was a common feeling, whenever the boys decided to tease him.

Raphael sighed, leaning back. “He needs all the help he can get, not that a villainous adulterer like you would understand.”

Despite the slim chance of anything he said being heeded, Balfour had to try. “Are you two really doing this right now?” Balfour asked, sarcastic and annoyed. Steelhands gave him an amused look, butting her head against Luvander’s palm like a cat.

_This isn’t about you, poppet_ , she told him.

“This isn’t about you, Balfour,” Luvander told him severely.

“I might actually stab you right now,” Balfour retorted with weary irritation. Seeing the empty threat for what it was, the boys ignored him.

“All I’m going to say,” Luvander told Raphael, “Is that a lady of quality is worth any number of ladies of, shall we say, quantity, and I’ve got the best lady one could possibly ask for in my hands right now.”

There was a short moment of dangerous silence. “Really,” Raphael asked, in a tone that implied that no matter how Luvander answered, it would be the wrong answer. On Luvander’s end, a slightly wide eyed silence with a barely hidden smile was the only answer. He had poked the sleeping dragon with a sharp stick and was waiting to see how it would respond.

“Put her down, Luvander,” Raphael warned. “Or everyone will know you’re nothing but a vicious flirt.”

The smile broke through, just a bit, on Luvander’s face, and a wicked gleam showed in his eye. “Am I? I’m not sure what you could possibly mean,” he chirped, holding on to Steelhands just a bit tighter. The dragon didn’t seem to mind in the slightest. “She knows how lucky she is to have my entire, devoted attention on her. Don’t you, darling?”

“Fine,” Raphael snarled, pulling Balfour down. Balfour yelped as Raphael wrapped his arms tightly around his waist, pressing his face to Balfour’s neck in an aggressive hug. It was more human contact than he’d had in longer than he could remember, but instead of soothed, he was more irritated than ever. “Cuddle her all you want,” Raphael went on. “I’ll just have to soothe Balfour’s delicate sensibilities. Do stop squirming,” he frowned at Balfour.

Luvander frowned, slightly, but continued stroking Steelhands. “You do that. But be careful, Balfour, not to get your hopes up too much. Raphael is an unrepentant tease. He’ll begin to sooth your delicate sensibilities and then change his mind in the blink of an eye and return to his-“ Luvander sniffed disdainfully, “Books.”

“I’m not sure what you’re implying,” Raphael’s voice got higher and tenser, and Balfour got more tense in tandem. He doubted that Raphael noticed that his hands were leaving bruises. He doubted, too, that anyone would notice later. “I’m perfectly capable of soothing a damaged ego. Balfour’s _soothed_.”

“Well I’m glad you can finally pay attention to someone other than yourself!” Luvander was nearly shouting, now.

All of a sudden, Balfour found that he’d had enough. He shoved Raphael away with more force than strictly necessary and lunged a few steps away. “Oh, go tear each other’s clothes off already!” His voice, he noted as he straightened his clothes, was more brittle than he’d meant to reveal, but he couldn’t bring himself to care just yet. “You’ve been dancing around it for months, everybody knows you want to fuck and nobody cares! Stop dragging the rest of us into your ridiculous game.”

Startled silence, he noted as his feet carried him out of the room at a pace that was only slightly more dignified than a run, was easier to run from than the jeers and cacophony that would have followed him out had he lost his temper like that two years ago. In fact, had he lost his temper like that in the Airman, he wouldn’t have been allowed to leave at all. As he rested against a wall at the top of the stairwell, shaking and damn near crying, he held himself tense for a moment as if at any moment he’d be pinned down and subject to any number of indignities. The airmen had always been cruel, capricious, and intimate. Whether Balfour was twisted up inside because of his time with them or because he’d always been a bit of a bastard at heart, he’d never been able to tell.

His therapist told him that he’d been bullied. He’d been too polite to laugh in her face, but the laughter was there, ugly and hidden in the private corners of his heart. To an outsider, it might seem like that; the weight of losing Amery and then trying, somehow, to fill his shoes in the Dragon Corps, had given him a role to play, but no outsider, even Thom, could understand Balfour’s place there. He was the youngest in a family, and his brothers might have humiliated him but they closed ranks on anyone who might have done the same. He wasn’t upset from the ridiculous farce from downstairs. It was mild, even polite, compared to the ridiculous things he’d been subject to only a year ago, when it seemed like fourteen of them were too many for the little space they’d had and the horseplay came close to murder sometimes.

No, what was tearing Balfour apart inside was the large and empty house, larger than the building he’d lived in for years and too empty by far. Luvander and Raphael weren’t enough for his greedy heart, and being grabbed and held down against his will was the first time he’d been touched at all in almost a year and it only reminded him of what he could never have again.

The weight of his grief hit him like a wave and he sank down, hands covering his face so that not even the empty hallway could witness his tears.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was supposed to be an amusing chapter WHOOPS


	6. Beloved

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rating went up a bit for this chapter but it isn't explicit, I promise

Still riding the high of his adrenaline, Luvander watched Balfour storm out in an outraged huff with eyebrows nearly meeting his hairline. “Do you suppose it was something we said?” He allowed Steelhands to slip off his nap and slink her way to the cold hearth where she could stretch out on the widest expanse of floor available, chin tucked onto her forepaws and eyes blank as if she wasn’t listening to everything about her. Dragons didn’t actually sleep- when they did, it was cause for alarm, but it hadn’t happened in years. They did go into a sort of dormant state, though, where they could lull the humans around them into a false sense of security and ask awkward questions about overheard conversations later.

Since she wasn’t huffing smoke at him or chasing Balfour upstairs, the hurt that sent him fleeing couldn’t have been all that sharp. He supposed it was just one of the young man’s increasingly eccentric moods. He’d have to remember to have a talk with Balfour about that. The rumors of his fragile mental state were meant to stay a lie, after all.

 He watched Balfour disappear up the stairs before turning his attention to Raphael, who was regarding him with crossed arms. Luvander’s overactive imagination drew him in a caricature with steam flowing from his nostrils and fire dancing behind his eyes; one could almost smell the burning metal and sulphur. Luvander clucked and slid over, putting a friendly hand on Raphael’s knee. “Oh, I don’t suppose Balfour is truly jealous,” he purred. “He knows where her heart lays.”

Raphael’s eyes narrowed in fury. “Perhaps it’s because he has _quality_ over _quantity_.” His voice was high pitched, an adorably obvious tell.

“Mmm, well, that’s something he and I have in common then,” Luvander murmured, scooting closer and draping an arm over Raphael’s rigid shoulders. “Darling, you’re so tense. Are you angry at me?”

“Why should I be angry at you?” Raphael asked angrily. “I don’t pay attention to people other than myself.”

“You _are_ angry at me,” Luvander said fondly.

“Of course I’m angry at you, you hideous troll,” Raphael pouted, turning to face Luvander with crossed arms. “You made Balfour cry.”

“Perhaps I should apologize to him then,” Luvander murmured, pressing his lips to Raphael’s cheek with closed eyes. It was a brave thing to do, all things considered, but Luvander found himself in a ridiculously optimistic mood tonight. When Raphael stayed still, he pulled back just enough to look him in the eyes. Their noses were nearly touching and Raphael’s pupils were dilated. A promising sign, indeed.

“Perhaps you should,” Raphael murmured.

Cheekily, Luvander tilted his head and asked “Are we still using Balfour as a metaphor or should I get up and go find him?”

Raphael sighed and looked at him. “You don’t take this seriously enough,” he chided, slipping an arm around Luvander- sadly, it was to rescue his book and not to provoke a more intimate situation on the couch.

“And you take it too seriously,” Luvander smirked, slipping a leg over Raphael’s hips to provoke a more intimate situation on the couch. “Who’s it going to hurt, hm?” The argument was a familiar one, if stated somewhat more boldly than ever before, and before Raphael had a chance to form a counterargument Luvander dared to press their lips together.

There was a thrilling moment of panic where Luvander almost pulled away and apologized- for kissing without asking, for needling Raphael into passion, for daring to exist at all. The words to salvage their friendship were forming in his head as he pulled back just slightly, pressing another soft kiss to the corner of Raphael’s mouth. He backed off molecule by molecule, savoring what was sure to be a regretful memory, and when there was only a breath between them Raphael leaned forward and kissed him back.

Raphael was all fire and heat, opening his mouth to deepen their kiss as he slipped his broad hand between Luvander’s shirt and his very stylish vest to press him closer. “You’re a heartless scoundrel,” he sighed when they finally parted. He tilted his head back as Luvander trailed gentle kisses from his chin to his ear, granting access perhaps a little too easily. “And I’m still angry at you.

“Are you,” Luvander grinned against Raphael’s ear. The way Raphael’s hands tugged at the back of his shirt, the readiness in which Raphael tilted his head back, the tension of thighs under his own all led to Luvander’s discovery of a fantastically exploitable weakness. As if sensing danger (and, Luvander had to admit, Raphael did have the second-sharpest senses in the room), Raphael grabbed hold of the back of Luvander’s shirt to hold on for dear life as Luvander put his very skilled mouth to work on his apparently sensitive neck.

“This is cheating,” Luvander heard Raph’s voice break between ragged breaths, and privately he agreed. Playing fair wasn’t in his nature, especially when Raphael had such deliciously obvious vulnerable spots to exploit. “Is it,” he murmured, teeth scraping against Raphael’s jugular and following it up with a tender openmouthed kiss. The scrabble of Raphael’s feet against the carpeted floor, and the notable lack of breath in his ear, sounded like victory.

As if remembering himself, Raphael began to reassert control over the situation. He turned his head and captured Luvander’s lips in a fierce kiss, turning up the heat. He was fierce like a dragon and it was this fierceness that Luvander couldn’t get enough of, even when surprisingly calloused hands, for a poet, snuck up the back of his shirt and blunt nails were dragged down his skin. It was just painful enough to make Luvander gasp into his mouth and wind his fingers into Raphael’s curls, pulling on them in revenge while their tongues battled for dominance.

It was Raphael, Luvander noted for later contemplation, that grabbed Luvander’s bum first, cupping it with his broad hands and giving it a very thorough squeezing. It was Raphael that introduced teeth to the kissing when Luvander sucked his lower lip into his mouth. It was Raphael who stripped Luvander’s shirt off, not even bothering to unbutton all the way before pausing for a split second to tug the offending garment over Luvander’s head and tossing it in a crumpled heap on the floor. Luvander noticed, of course, but found no time between kissing and groping to be properly offended.

Somehow they moved upstairs, unseen but very likely not unheard by the other occupants that Luvander honestly forgot in his enthusiasm. He pressed Raphael against the door, kissing his neck and stealing a grope while the other fumbled to open the door. Once they were on the other side, Raphael took his revenge, pinning Luvander to the door with his arms holding up Luvander’s knees so that his feet were well off the ground and very nearly fucking him through the few clothes they still had on. Getting from there to the bed took some feat of engineering that Luvander barely remembered at all.

They moved perhaps too fast. Decorum should have demanded a slower pace and whispered reassurances that this wasn’t some horrible mistake they would both regret in the morning. Decorum was, for the most part, ignored. Luvander and Raphael were racing, competing for who could make the other submit first. The fire in their blood was kindled and burned too hot for rational thinking, and for a while, they were young and impulsive again.

That wasn’t to say, however, that there was no conversation at all. As Raphael stretched from the bed to reach the contents of a low drawer in his dresser, Luvander let his fingertips trail over a tempting expanse of exposed skin and his lips press to the small of Raphael’s back. He’d intended to be the one to break the silence and ask if this was really alright, but he was beaten to the punch.

“Don’t get cold feet on me now,” Raphael grinned, looking over his shoulder at Luvander. “You started this fire, it’s your job to tend it.”

And tend it he did.

When he was finished, Luvander let himself melt onto Raphael’s chest, trembling in every limb and shamefully out of breath. He comforted himself that he was not the only one whose chest was heaving, and Raphael, bless his heart, was louder about it. It was a good sort of noisy, happy loud sighs with every exhale that made Luvander feel pride in his skills.

He rolled to the side, keeping enough presence of mind to sop up their mess with a pillowcase stolen directly off one of the pillows- revenge for the way his clothes had been so carelessly tossed onto the floor earlier, and laziness, because it was easier than getting up to find a towel. It gave him the tiniest malevolent joy to know that if the pillowcase became ruined, Raphael would be incredibly irritated whether he went without a pillow or used a piece from another set. The need for a matching, complete set might even drive him to visit Thremedon for a shopping trip, which Luvander would be more than happy to accompany him on.

It was wonderful to finally flop back to the bed and wrap an arm around Raphael’s waist from behind, pressing his nose to the small of his back and taking in the thrilling scent of him. If books smelled more like that, he’d have devoted his life to the ‘Versity.

Because they were so relaxed, it took a moment to realize that Raphael’s breath had the barest of hitches. Leaning up to peek over his shoulder took a monumental effort, but the telltale wetness on Raphael’s face spelled out trouble. These were dark waters that Luvander wasn’t entirely sure how to navigate. He dove in anyway.

Unsure of how to begin, he placed a light kiss on the top of Raphael’s shoulder and lay back so his head was just behind Raphael’s. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. After a moment with no response, he forged on. “Don’t get me wrong- I’ve no regrets. Not about this. It’s just..” His hand trailed down Raphael’s waist and lay on his hip, resting where Luvander still ached to stake his claim.

Raphael wiped his face and took a deep, fortifying breath. “Sorry. It’s not you, I’m just.. being a soppy idiot.” He laughed softly at himself, and Luvander’s fingers curled in a desperate need to comfort him that he barely held in check. “As usual.”

“You don’t need to be ashamed,” he told the back of Raphael’s neck. “Sex is a messy business, emotions run high. This is hardly the first time my skill has made someone weep.” He kept his tone light, and Raphael snorted at him, then cursed softly and wiped his face some more.

Another quiet moment passed, and Luvander steeled his nerves and brought himself to ask a terrifying, but very important question. “Would you like me to go?”

“I.” Raphael still didn’t turn to face him, but he snuck a hand (that, Luvander hoped, wasn’t covered in snot) down to twine his fingers with Luvander’s and pull his arm across Raphael’s own chest. “I don’t want to be alone.”

It wasn’t the answer Luvander wanted, but it was one he could work with. He shifted to make himself more comfortable, using his feet to wiggle the comforter that had been left at the foot of the bed, what a slob, up onto their bare feet. He found himself drifting off to the sound of Raphael’s breathing. It was terribly romantic, until the poetry began.

“They knew not I knew thee,” Raphael whispered miserably into the darkness, an unexpected chorus of mournful sibilants, “Who knew thee too well. Long, long shall I rue thee, too deeply to tell.” His voice broke on the last word and he buried his face into the pillow that was, by now, already wet with tears. Luvander held him in silence and felt when his breathing evened out and he drifted into the relative peace of sleep. The house was very still, but when the sun touched the horizon, Luvander was wide awake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The poem quoted is ["When We Two Parted"](http://www.bartleby.com/101/597.html) by Lord Byron.


	7. Nemesis

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is technically optional, because it's Balfour and Troius.

“Balfour?”

It could have been minutes or an hour that passed before he noticed hands on his wrists, gently tugging his balled-up fists from his face. He gazed blankly at the worried flesh of the knuckles and the red cuticles that peeled back from bitten nails and remembered how his own hands had once looked very much the same. Then he was looking at them no more and was instead being guided away from the stairwell with uncommon care, led like a child from the top of the stairwell to a nearby bedroom. His world shrank to a manageable size when the door was shut behind them.

 “Don’t tell me they made you cry,” came an exasperated sigh. “I don’t understand how you can stand to be so passive. You only have a bloody dragon.” A cool cloth wiped under his eyes and warm, if rough, fingers brushed his hair from where it had stuck to his face from sweat or tears. Balfour closed his eyes under the treatment, trying to gather his wits from where he’d scattered them in his fit of grief.

“It wasn’t them, exactly,” he began, but one quelling look from Troius had him leaving that sentiment where it belonged. “Okay,” he approached it from a different direction, “It wasn’t entirely them.” He looked down to avoid eye contact and instead focused on the metal chassis of his hands, forever beyond the damage he’d once done but still vulnerable to tea stains and miniscule scratches in the metal. Balfour might have given anything, that very moment, to be away from this room with its awkward conversation and the dried up husk of a former friendship, a fossil that predated everything he currently cared about. Troius could wear the mask of a diplomat very well, but around Balfour he’d always been as delicate in conversation as a dragon in a room full of priceless painted eggshells. Though it irritated everyone else, it had a way of putting Balfour at ease, as if the role expected of him here was that of his worst self, his ugliest side. It wasn’t always a relief. He didn’t exactly like that part of himself.

 Balfour peeked as Troius pulled up the chair from his desk and straddled it backwards with his usual careless grace. “So have they snogged yet?” He had to choke back an ugly snort of laughter.

“Not when I left, but I sort of…” it was very difficult to hide his smile, but he let his hair fall into his face in a pathetic attempt to hide it, “…told them to,” he finished in a whisper.

“You didn’t,” Troius grinned, drooping eyes alight with mischief. “You cheeky little bastard!”

“Yes, well,” Balfour laughed softly, still determinedly looking down and sitting on his hands to avoid wringing them, as doing so scratched the metal and made the most horrid noise. “It’s long overdue. And then I sort of… ran away.” Despondant, he slouched down lower on the bed.

“Well, someone had to do it, they were honestly getting repulsive. Did you cry because you used up all your courage telling them to fuck or were you offended because they said something mildly rude?” Troius folded his arms over the back of the chair and rested his chin on his arms, regarding Balfour with sleepy curiosity.

The casual cruelty reminded Balfour of an ache in his chest that would never go away. He was still in mourning, and thought he would be forever; the dragons, the airmen, his relationship with his family and his friendships were all dead and buried, and he was alone even with Steelhands in his head. The ache, sharper than it normally was, made him careless in his speech. To put it the way Adamo had once, he was out of fucks to give today. “I suppose I was crying because all my friends are dead,” he said offhandedly, worrying a loose thread in the sheet on Troius’ rumpled bed.

What followed was a quiet, horrendously awkward moment that got tenser as it stretched on. “Not all of them,” the other man finally muttered, his voice forced into an ill-fitting semblance of concern.

Energized by the confession, Balfour finally met Troius’ eyes, haggard and defiant. “They may as well be. Rook and Ghislain took off as soon as they could. Luvander and Adamo avoided me as much as I avoided them, until they couldn’t anymore, and you only pretended-” He choked on his words, moral courage deserting him even though the words needed to be said. He kept staring at Troius with red-rimmed eyes, moving his mouth as if the words needed to be chewed up before being spit out. “We haven’t been friends since school, Troius. I’m not even sure we were friends then. You used me.”

Troius stared back at him, face tilted slightly down so he looked even more like a sad basset hound than usual. “That doesn’t mean I wasn’t your friend,” he said quietly. “I know I’m a shit friend, and a shit person in your eyes. I did pretend, a little,” he looked down for a moment, scratching the back of his neck in blatant discomfort, but then he met Balfour’s eyes again with a little of the same defiance Balfour himself was feeling. “And I manipulated the ever-loving shit out of you. But I was doing it for the Esar, and for Volstov.”

“Did it ever occur to you,” Balfour asked, voice strained from the pressure that was creeping upward from the soles of his feet and turning his face slowly red, “to say no? Or even to just- _tell_ me what was going on?”

“And miss the chance to get a fucking dragon?!” Troius laughed, mocking. He wasn’t taking this seriously. He didn’t take anything seriously. “Don’t pretend you wouldn’t have done the same.”

The anger in Balfour rose higher, and he could hear blood rushing like a river in spate in his ears. “I wouldn’t have committed _treason_!”

“You _did_ commit treason!” Troius’ words came rushed, an undercurrent of anger in his laughter. “You did it when your dragon was more loyal to you than to the Esar! You did it when you were more loyal to Anastasia than the Esar! You-“

“Don’t,” snarled Balfour, rising to his feet, “Say her name.” He towered over Troius, who stayed seated and perfectly still, looking up at Balfour as if waiting for him to raise a hand in violence. The lamp in the room was set above Troius’ bed, which meant it was behind Balfour and his shadow fell over Troius. Good, Balfour thought: that was where traitors belonged.

Another long, tense moment passed before Troius swallowed his pride with a visible gulp. “I’m sorry,” Troius admitted quietly. “I overstepped.” Balfour, mollified if still unforgiving, sat back down with a deep, even breath.

“I miss you,” Troius muttered after another short pause. “We were friends, even if I was a shit one. Nobody else here likes me, they only put up with me because I have a dragon and they can’t kill me without feeling bad about themselves. I can’t even leave.” Balfour, too angry to be understanding and at the same time too sad to be properly angry, just sat there, feeling nothing, giving Troius a cold stare.

Troius got up, turned his chair around, and sat facing Balfour with his hands in his lap. “I want us to be friends again,” he said, quiet and, for once, serious. Another moment dragged on through the spiteful silence before Troius spoke again, obviously unhappy. “I’m going to be terrible at it. You know me,” his lips lifted in a wry half-smile, “I’m, what does Ghislain call me? A snake with an asshole?”

“….I think it was a snake made of asshole,” Balfour said softly, the iceberg of his anger breaking up into smaller, manageable chunks.

“Mm, yes. Colorful. And so appealing.” They stared at each other for a moment before the tension broke completely, both of them giggling like schoolboys.

“He’s got a talent for names,” Balfour admitted, wringing the sheet under his hand and trying very hard to get his emotions under control. He looked up at Troius, exhausted and desperately sad under his smile. “You’re a slob,” he observed, keeping up with the ridiculous negotiation they were somehow having. “You insult me all the time, you make me feel awful about myself, and you have _terrible_ manners. Seriously, you talk while you eat and spray crumbs everywhere. It’s awful.”

“Is that why you liked me so much, when we worked together?” Troius asked with a cheeky grin. “Because I remind you of them?”

The revelation slammed into Balfour like a punch to the gut. “Oh, Regina.  I think it might be.” He looked up at Troius. “I miss you, too. You’re the only one I can be awful around without feeling like I’m letting everyone down, somehow.” Despite the tension he held in his gut to keep his emotions under control, tears were welling up in his eyes. They weren’t grief, this time, or anger; these were the unforgivable tears of self-pity.

Troius made a disgusted face. “Oh. Oh, no,” he groaned. “You aren’t going to make me hug you, are you? Balfour,” he whined, but slid over to sit next to Balfour on the bed anyway, slinging an arm around Balfour’s shoulders. His head tilted away, a grand show of reluctance. “You are unbelievably, atrociously clingy.”

As quickly as the tears had begun, they stopped and he used his sleeve to wipe the remaining moisture from his face. “I didn’t ask you to touch me. Don’t stop, though,” he ordered, resting his head on Troius’ shoulder with a little sigh for the warmth.

“Mm,” he felt, more than heard, Troius’ assent humming through his chest. “That’s just what I’ve always wanted to hear. Don’t stop, Troius. You’re so good at this, Troius.” The sarcasm didn’t escape either of them, but Balfour chose to play the game anyway. “That’s because most ladies beg you to stop once they get a good look at your face, right?” He hid his grin in Troius’ shoulder while the (slightly) older man pulled back. “Cheek. I’ll have you know I’m known as a fantastic lover throughout Thremedon.”

The opportunity, normally snatched up by literally anyone else before Balfour had the chance to perfect his quip, was too good to pass up. “Yes, but we both know you paid for the reputation.” Like a jolt of lightning, something occurred to Balfour and he leaned up, looking Troius in the face. “Wait. You aren’t trying to seduce me, are you,” he asked with narrow eyes.

“Oh no,” Troius deadpanned, turning to face Balfour and pull him closer. “You have discovered my wicked plotting. The treason, trying to murder you and months of being exiled in this hellhole are finally paying off, because now I get to put my hand down your pants. What joy. Hear my laugh, for it is an evil one. Ha.”

Nearly nose to nose with Troius, Balfour raised one eyebrow. “I knew it,” he said smugly. “You just can’t keep your hands off me, you vile seducer.”

“Don’t play this game with me,” Troius warned, placing one hand on Balfour’s thigh, high enough so that his intent couldn’t be mistaken. “I told you. I can’t leave and I am a very lonely man.”

Balfour, secure enough in his pride to back out of a challenge, nevertheless felt the legacy left to him by the airmen and the training given to him by Luvander calling in his blood. Without letting himself overthink, he plunged headlong into danger, speaking the words that felt right in the moment without regard for consequences. He leaned forward, hips pushing up into Troius’ hand. “Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve had a real hand on me?” The look on Troius face was well worth the risk. His mouth gaped open a bit.

“You.. I don’t want to play this game anymore. I need an adult.” Troius withdrew his hands, scooting the tiniest bit away from Balfour and pulling a sorrowful frown.

Balfour laughed, low and victorious, and then turned and pulled a knee up on the bed so that he could face Troius. “That’s what you get for flirting with an airman, you know.” He stopped and tilted his head. “Well, that or stabbed in the belly, depending on the airman. Some of us were very insecure.” He gave Troius a wicked smirk, feeling, at long last, what it must have been like for the other Airman to have a new recruit to torture. “And now I know you’re just a tease. What a shame.”

“Yes, well.” Troius cleared his throat. “I’d hate for you to think I was taking advantage of you while you were vulnerable. I mean, that’s exactly what I was doing, but I’d still hate for you to know it.”

“You don’t have to worry,” Balfour was still smiling at him. “It’s not like I’m ever going to trust you.” He crawled up, claimed the half of Troius’ bed that was flush against the wall and made himself comfortable.

“Good,” Troius murmured, watching Balfour with a vague look of concern etched on his features. “I’d lose all respect for you if you did. Sorry, what are you doing?”

Balfour fluffed a pillow and sighed, sinking down into it. “Taking a nap.” He was sleepy, he didn’t want anyone to be able to find him, and he correctly assumed that nobody would look for him in the lair of the beast unless they were looking for a body- which, of course, they wouldn’t do while Steelhands kept calm.

“…Here?” The sheer incredulity in Troius’ voice was an unexpected joy. Since they’d been in school, Troius thought himself superior to Balfour by dint of being firstborn in a family more entangled in politics than Balfour’s own. From the beginning, he’d been wrong, but it took several years and a vile traitorous act for Balfour to realize who was really in control. He didn’t mind letting Troius think the odds were still in his favor, though.

“You can keep reading,” Balfour allowed. “I don’t mind the light.”

In the stillness that followed, Balfour had to try very hard not to show the smile that was creeping at the edges of his lips. Troius finally huffed and settled in with him, picking up a roman from his desk- one that he had, presumably, set down to explore the sound of Balfour crying and hyperventilating in the hallway not very long ago. He even reached his arm around the back of the pillow, allowing Balfour to lay his head against Troius’ chest in the narrow bed.

“You’re bell-cracked, you know,” he sighed, opening the book to where a ribbon marked the pages. Balfour only smiled and closed his eyes, more secure and comfortable than he had in ages. He was asleep on Troius’ shoulder before the lamp went out for the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Seeeeeee that wasn't so bad, was it? BALFOUR WON.
> 
> There's a sequel to this in the works.


End file.
